Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

A change of assignment always brought with it a period of adjustment—it took a while to get used to new teammates and procedures—but the whirlwind of activity that had engulfed him in the last twenty-four hours was unsettling, especially for someone like himself, who kept a tight rein on his emotions. The private rage that defined him was always simmering just below the surface, but the rigors and routines of military life provided a purposeful way for him use that anger.

That was missing for him now. He had gone from being a Ranger with a clearly defined set of responsibilities and objectives, to being…what exactly? Even Zelda, a woman in a profession dominated by men, seemed to have staked out a niche for herself, but he was still waiting to see how he would fit in. From the moment he’d joined King’s team on the plane to Myanmar, Somers had the feeling that he was just a warm body filling an empty seat, and that uncertainty about his place in the scheme of things was eating at his self-control. He felt an almost overpowering urge to destroy something…anything.

He swallowed the bubble of rage down and turned to Zelda. “Can you walk?”

“Been walking most of my life, big guy,” she said, but the words came out in short bursts, as if she lacked the breath to utter a complete sentence.

He acknowledged with a nod and headed for the door, but she forestalled him. Moving stiffly at first, she hastened back into the room where they had confronted Rainer, and emerged a moment later, shoving the abandoned laptop computer into her backpack. “Might be something useful on this.”

“Good thinking.” It seemed like the right thing to say. Without further comment, he headed for the exit, only peripherally aware of Zelda a few steps behind.

He immediately sensed that something was different about the exterior of the compound. A low indistinct noise, like the hum of conversation in a crowded room, pervaded the still night. Before he could identify the source, he heard Nighteyes’s anxious voice warning of activity in the compound, and he knew that his ears had not deceived him.

As he and Zelda moved from the building, he saw a torrent of human figures pouring out of Building Four, less than a hundred yards away. Most of them looked like refugees, slack-jawed and dull-eyed, wearing clothes that were little more than rags, but there were a few men who stood out from the crowd, partly because of their garish attire and partly because of the AK-47s they held at the ready. The gunmen seemed to be herding the others, but their eyes were sweeping the compound, as if searching for targets. One of the gunmen looked directly at Zelda and Somers, and with a shout to the others, raised his rifle.

Somers started to bring his MP5 around, but before he could put the red dot on his chosen target, the man’s head snapped back in a spray of red. Someone was looking out for them.

Another of the armed men was downed by a quiet but deadly shot from the distant sniper. Yet even as the shepherds were felled, some of the herd revealed their true nature. Their eyes were no longer dull, but focused on the fleeing Delta operators like laser beams, and with a noise that sounded almost like the braying of coyotes, a dozen of them lurched forward.

Somers grabbed Zelda by the arm and propelled her ahead of him, even as he broke into a run. “Go!”

She seemed to grasp the urgency of the situation. After a few faltering steps, she sprinted ahead, racing for the gap in the gate and the perceived safety that lay beyond. She easily outpaced Somers, but it wasn’t because she was lighter or more athletic; he was intentionally hanging back, just in case the pursuing horde caught up to them. Without even looking, he crooked his arm backward and triggered a long burst from the MP5 into the oncoming mass of bodies.

Zelda slipped through the fence and resumed her dash up the road. In the moment it took for Somers to thread himself into the gap, she vanished completely into the darkness. A spur of metal snagged his shoulder, raking his skin through the fabric of his shirt, but he wrestled free and ran after her.

Behind him, there was a metallic rattle of bodies hitting the fence, and he risked a look back. Some of the pursuers were squirming through the hole, but several more were scaling the fence, as nimble as squirrels on a tree trunk. Somers fired out the magazine, but the rounds from his silenced submachine gun seemed to produce about as much effect as a swarm of gnats.

There was no time to reload. He kept his grip on the weapon as he bolted up the hill, but the seconds he had spent getting through the fence had cost him his scant lead. Before he’d gone twenty steps, they were on him.